In the mass production of items which are initially formed in a hot state or a molten state, it has been the practice to effect a quality control when such items have cooled off and/or have been produced to at least their rough cool state. The unfortunate aspect of said production technique is that when an item which is being made by such a production scheme is found to be unacceptable, because of a fault in the production technique, a great deal of scrap has been produced. In other words, by the time that a cooled item is measured in such a procedure, it has been followed by many other items on the production line which have been made in a similar way. If any cooled item in the production line has incorrect dimensions, then there is a strong likelihood that the following items on the production line have the same wrong dimensions.
The present system provides a means to measure a production item in its "hot" state; and, if its dimensions are unacceptable, the person running the production line will be alerted and can either correct the problem while production continues, or shut down the system and correct the fabrication difficulty.